


Many Moons - Harvest Moon Shorts

by likesynonymsforjoy



Category: Harvest Moon
Genre: 64 damn prompts, DS Cute, F/M, Island of Happiness, Multi, Sunshine Islands
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 04:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15405303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likesynonymsforjoy/pseuds/likesynonymsforjoy
Summary: 64 Damn Prompts is a non-fandom-specific prompt list older than time itself, I believe, and the stories it has spun innumerable. Here I plan to offer introspection-heavy looks into various Harvest Moon characters. I have a lot of affection for many titles in the franchise, and with that comes my personal biases about villagers and storylines.





	1. Every You, Every Me

He had many sides.

On the barge that transported him to the various islands on which he conducted business, his mannerisms were crude and his sentences were peppered with the foulest language. These traits were the norms and expectations held by his seafaring peers. In his private quarters, he would practice spitting with gusto – in even the smallest ways, he had to hold his own with the men who worked on the sea craft year round. It was all a means to earn and keep their respect, and earn it he did. Though he was much younger than most of the men in the islands' shipping business, he was a hard man, as capable of spinning ridiculous yarns as the men whose age rivaled that of the rusted, wind beaten barge. As an act of unspoken etiquette, the men never called bull on the tall tales told on lonely nights spent at sea.

He learned a lot from these men, with hard work being the second most important lesson after maintaining a respectable image.

With the wild dogs, he was a man of silent awe in the presence of their unpracticed elegance. Though he was not above romping with the pack, he much preferred sitting aside and observing the dogs prowl about the forest or listening to them bay late at night. The wild dogs were, in a strange way, his, similar to the way in which the forest, though frequented by islanders, was theirs. He had a deep appreciation of the wild dogs' savage beauty and their acceptance of him. They were a family of sorts, and they had adopted him. In the beginning of his relationship with the dogs, he had thought that he had found them.

In all reality, the dogs had found him and shown him the beauty of their unquestionable acceptance.

In his work, he was aloof and devoid of outward emotion. Friendly advances and small talk were unneeded and unwanted distractions. He enjoyed the backbreaking labor for all its mess and required effort. Nothing pleased him more than a day's work done well. His working self earned him a reputation for being cold and wholly unapproachable. While this reputation kept his days clear of extraneous conversations and diversions, the pointed glares of gossipy women did make him nervous.

In a move to calm his nerves rather than to save face, he got into the practice of giving a good-natured tip of his hat when passing familiar faces, though he never did get into the habit of having unnecessary conversations with his customers.

Sometimes, when he stood on the beach late at night, waiting for the barge to take him to another island, he was a small and insignificant existence under the arc of the starry and infinite sky. The heavenly bodies that extended above him and much farther than his eyes could see were beyond his comprehension. Nights spent on the beach left him feeling challenged and unsettled by the immensity.

This was a fact that, in all his pride, he would never admit to the barge workers.

In her company, he simply loved. She was his equal in spitting, and there were many times that made him wonder at her strength – whether she was stronger than him. She had class and grace that captivated him and she kept him anchored when the sheer endlessness of the cosmos threatened to pull him away. Unknowingly, sweetly, she fed into him his most strongly felt emotions. There was a very special quality in her which allowed him to be a less fragmented version of himself. She was a woman with an unyielding spirit, and for that, he loved her.

He felt no need to pursue her with tactless flirtation; he knew no urgency in the matter. If it had taught him nothing else, working as an animal tradesman taught him patience. He knew that, to love him return, fully and properly, she would need the uncommon ability to love every shade of his person.

By the sweet blessing of the powers that be, she, too, had many sides.


	2. Rings

Claire was being haunted by rings.

The wooden table, the centerpiece of her – no longer their – house: covered in water rings from countless cups of coffee and tea, juices and milk bottles. She didn't use coasters because she believed in messes and imperfections. He had spent a long time frequenting aged hotels rife with battered furniture and ragged sheets as he pursued an endless summer. He was not shaken by water rings on a table.

Goddess, that table. It was where she had spent each morning – planning the day's work, checking her accounts, making phone calls to the market, and gathering herself for the daunting challenges that always faced her: saving money to reinforce the barns, planting a new season's crops, smashing stones for expansion, and, in the summers, making time to visit Kai on the beach for a snatch of conversation laden with hope. In front of that table, she had bared her heart to him for the first time. Wordlessly, heart filled to the brim, she handed him a feather the color of an autumn sky.

"For real, Claire?" At her nod, he had continued. "I'm always so happy whenever you stop by. In fact, others come by all the time, but none cheer me up like you. What I'm trying to say is…I really love you, Claire."

Ah, what beautiful words they had been to her at the time. As that summer – her fourth in Forget-Me-Not Valley – dwindled down, she no longer made casual conversation with her fiancé – how honey-sweet that word felt on her tongue – on the beach. They chattered gleefully about their upcoming wedding in the heedless manner of two people shamelessly in love. All was well.

After their marriage, when Kai was integrated into Claire's life, the rings on the table began polluting the area in front of the unused chair. It was a small sign of their shared home and their quiet mornings spent at the table, planning and enjoying the simplicity of each other's company. That ringed table harbored memories beyond their engagement. It wore their Starry Nights, their Winter Thanksgivings, and their blizzard day conversations, their worries and their successes. That table told the story of Claire's before and their wedded present.

Though there were rings on both sides of the table, it now told the story of a bitter after. It sagged under the weight of a conversation and an ending and a lonely young woman, head in her arms on its ringed surface.

Her field, fertile, full of barns and crops – her visual bounty – had once housed a line of five pineapple trees, proud and tall, lush with blooms and new leaves come springtime. Claire had spitefully noted that there was a tree for each year of their formerly blissful marriage. In her disgust, she had ruefully clobbered at the trunks of each tree with her axe. It had been a slapdash job, one performed in a desperate grasp for catharsis. The tree stumps sat in their line, all five ringed with their age. Each time Claire went to that section of the field, she was assaulted by the view of the ringed stumps of trees she had planted for Kai.

Originally, she had planted one tree.

"Pineapple's worth a lot," Takakura had told her, nodding in approval. It was during that first spring, when she was struggling with money and spent each day trudging around in premature defeat. His comment made her happy. Money was a necessity and trees were easy. Come summer, she would be reaping the benefits of this tree.

She met Kai the last day of spring. She had been drawn to him with that initial contact, but as they acquainted themselves throughout that summer, "drawn" became a weak word for what she began to feel toward him. After she found out that he loved pineapple, her plan of making good money from the trees was replaced by her plan to garner his attention with the fruit.

When she planted four more trees at summer's end, Takakura had looked at her quizzically. On the day that each tree was felled, exposing those damn rings, he did not question her or her waste of good lumber.

Kai had given his excuses and left her in the midst of a bitterly cold winter. The valley was barren and so were the remnants of their marriage. Sitting at their ringed table, he gave his reasons for the departure from Claire, from four seasons, from the valley.

"I loved you, Claire. I do still love you; don't doubt me. I live for summers, though."

She had been horrified. Her husband, her Kai, her dearly beloved – leaving her to pursue his endless summer.

His departure plunged her into an endless winter that lasted through that bitter winter's conclusion and into the following spring.

She had kept their rings in a decisive moment of self-torment. Weren't wedding rings meant to represent an endlessness? The cyclical nature of love? The rings, misrepresentative and tortuous though they were, sat on her bookshelf. She often considered them and their flat meaning. Forever…ha.

These were the rings that haunted her – the ringed table that acted as the beginning, the centerpiece, and the end of their marriage. The pineapple tree stumps that had fed their affections, given them a common ground, given rise to conversations and knowing. The wedding rings that had once represented their bond. They now represented a shell, a shadow, an echo.

And yet.

And yet, looking out the window, Claire saw a ring of light around the midmorning sun, weak in its early spring splendor. She began wondering. She looked to the weddings rings gathering dust on the bookshelf. She had a few pineapples in storage. She had told herself that they would be shipped soon, but had she believed that? Wasn't she saving them for Kai? Didn't she wish for his return?

Perhaps it was time for her to find Kai once more. Though his leaving had thrust her into an endless winter, he had once been her endless summer. His love had been her warmth, his smile her sun.

She would pursue her endless summer rather than sitting and waiting for it to come as she had in the past. She didn't know what sort of outcome to expect, but she brought the wedding rings and a pineapple along with a proposition to follow summer together during the winters. Takakura, she knew, would support her. He, too, had once been haunted by his own set of rings.

When she proposed her idea to him, her neighbor and mentor, a fortress of strength and will during her lowest moments, spoke one word.

"Go."

Claire set out to find Kai, her heart filled with hope and a pineapple in her rucksack – it was similar to those summers of years past. No matter the end result, the two were about to come full circle – their journey had become its own ring.

She had an inkling that, despite their failings in the past, this ring of their marriage's second coming would be continuous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same as last chapter - here's the old author's note. 
> 
> "I feel that the use of rings in this may be overdone, and at the same time I'm pleased with the outcome. This needs work, I know, because I started out with one idea and halfway through segued into another idea and ended up joining the two somewhere in the middle. For now, I am presenting it as is because I'm really excited about it and I am dying to get some feedback.
> 
> I've been wanting to write about Kai and Claire (from DS Cute, not More Friends of Mineral Town) for years. The idea was different, and I thought it was just fantastic, but it never quite worked out for some reason. I think it's because I always had Kai leaving at the end of summer and Claire waiting around for him to return the next summer. The way I write Claire, she's not a waiter. She will never be written as someone who waits around for a person's return, because, let's face it: I write myself into every character I write about, even if it IS fanfiction.
> 
> No promises here, but I might continue their story with some of these prompts. I'm curious about what happens next, but I also like to leave things open-ended. Thoughts?
> 
> Thanks for reading!"
> 
> Certainly heavy handed with the rings imagery! Next thing I add here will be Actual Recent Writing. I sincerely hope I can tone down my obsessive prompt-following!


	3. Linger

She waited for a year, amassing a collection of cast-off artifacts and autumn flowers, stumbling through pressing conversations and too-early visits. 

Balmy spring days oozed into the doldrums of summer, which she spent tamping out a path up past the mansion and winding down to the shoreline, whiling away the hours in anticipation of some indistinct shift. 

The seat of her shorts got acquainted with sticky bar stools that held on a beat too long, reminding her of the dangers of lingering. She wore a rut in the floorboards of her temporary lodging, obstructing her escape.

As the year neatly saw itself out, restlessness finally compelled her to act.

In the pre-dawn mist, she trudged heavily away with wounded pride and a haphazardly pieced heart and never ceased her waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an old one-off of mine, rewritten for this prompt doodad. The original was titled "Crooked." Here's my author's note from the original:
> 
> "This isn't quality, but the idea hit me at midnight and wouldn't let up. Inspired by a line from Auden's 'As I Walked Out One Evening' which reads, "You shall love your crooked neighbor/With your crooked heart." This short thing is concerning Nami in A Wonderful Life and how she leaves if you don't marry her in your first year."
> 
> I first played Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life in I believe fourth grade. I would've been 9 or 10. Nami leaving the valley was my first brush with heartbreak, and oh, how awful it was! I didn't understand heart events etc. at that time. I've come a long way from that! I tried to catch the delightfully sluggish ennui of Forget-Me-Not Valley that permeates this particular Harvest Moon title.


	4. Hunger

Vaughn relied upon strict mental regimentation to get through the day, operating under the belief that emotions are controllable; each has its proper time and place, but compartmentalization becomes powerless when the thing to be contained is amorphous.

Attraction and infatuation weren’t unfamiliar feelings. He was neither too proud nor detached to deny himself the pleasures of passing flirtations and short-lived trysts. The situation at hand, however, was dangerously unpredictable: it had located hairline cracks in the boundaries he’d willfully set between his sense of duty to his career and things that distract. 

Never before had he felt desire so strong that it drove him to distraction. 

He had become enamored with her long after the two struck up a good rapport and he’d softened to the island community. Getting acquainted with folks was all right; customer relations wasn’t so dry an undertaking when his business dealings were with friends. It was that damned fixation that threw him for a loop, for things of that nature had always seemed to ease up on him. They’d settle in a little clumsily, unexpected but gradual enough that he could make room for the excess. This time, the emotion had come in a sudden eruption. On some unremarkable afternoon in the haze of late summer, their fingers brushed as coins were exchanged, and lord, how it’d struck him like flint. As the weeks plodded towards autumn, what began as a spark became one hell of a blaze.

Never before had he so struggled. His innate stoicism was not a friend to this yearning that gnawed hungrily at his self-discipline. Its burning core stole his peace, first begging for and then demanding relief in the form of raw physicality. The wild thing ached something fierce for the fiery liquor of desirous mouths communing; I will not rest, it asserted, nor will I burn out until I am fed.

He would often wonder, How do I tame this?

It was a daily struggle to shoulder the ungainly weight of ravenous need, and his knees nearly buckled under its heft. Denying the presence of the bone-deep longing was a fruitless endeavor, so he did his damndest to starve it into submission. The intensity of the beast deterred him from approaching - better to let it die out than to to involve her in its madness. 

Perhaps he would burst with the longing; perhaps he would address it when he regained control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This here lil' number is about those runaway crushes where you get bowled over by the feeling in all its intoxicating irrationality. If you’ve never experienced that, it can be sort of fun until it lasts more than a week and then after that it’s like okay that’s enough thanks!!
> 
> I've never been fond of the almost fanonical representation of Vaughn as an Angry And Unlovéd Sadboi Who Has Never Encountered A Woman. Being a wanderer ain’t synonymous with being celibate, y'all. I tried to rural-ify the way I worded things to fit the mold of a cattle rancher dressed like he walked off a Western movie set. I grew up in a podunk cow town and drew from the local yeehaw dialect that I myself never embraced until very recently. Snobbery stopped being fun! As exemplified here, I favor 'y'all,' 'folks,' and 'a'int,' and I'm a proud Midwestern 'ope'-r.


	5. Missing Time

In the dense wilds west of town, a soft silence descended upon the mountaintop some ages ago, and there it rests to this day, overlooking a roiling river that whispers through distant lands. That ancient stillness travels down the mountain’s face and drifts about fragrant pine-misted hollows. Among these hallowed grounds, Natalie takes refuge from the whiplash dramatics of polite company; her strength is nestled in the sweet, moss-musty air of craggy hideaways that swaddle partakers with promises of secrecy. She bathes herself in the serenity of distance when the busybody village becomes oppressive; she wilts in the radiance of such neighborly kindness.

Breaking bread with the tempestuous winds is a revival of old friends communing once again and everything settles back to its rhythm. 

Dampened by dewdrop kisses, the blissfully solitudinous woman floats back east as the forest settles around the space she occupied. 

It will welcome her awed presence in its placid corridors once she returns and sit in hushed timelessness in the interim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I try to branch out from romance and playable characters!
> 
> Natalie has never been a favorite character of mine - she seems like somebody had a good idea but didn't flesh it out all the way. I've found that giving such characters my own meaning helps me appreciate the canon character a bit more. 
> 
> Fan of hers or not, I have always liked that she spends time meandering about the forest and the mountain in Island of Happiness. While this was originally meant to be quite overtly religious, I decided against that route. Natalie doesn't strike me as classically religious; instead, I tried to give her wanderings a certain spirituality. I'm not the most outdoorsy, adventurous person, but even I can admit that there is something almost holy and sacred about an old forest!

**Author's Note:**

> The original author's note from this chapter (posted on fanfiction.net under the same username) is as follows:
> 
> "This is a rewrite, one which makes me much happier than the piece I wrote for this same prompt a few years ago. I plan to restart this prompts project sporadically, as college won't allow for frequent updates, but I should be improving my writing due to a professional writing minor I've picked up. This prompt was interesting for me to pursue, because I, in the way that I wrote Vaughn, have many 'sides,' as lots of people do. I may have written a bit of myself into Vaughn while keep him in what I imagine his character to be. May have. I'd love opinions, suggestions, critique, or anything you lovely readers may throw at me!
> 
> Vaughn is definitely one of my favorites when it comes to Harvest Moon characters. He'll probably show up a lot. Fair warning."
> 
> Graduated college last year, hopefully write a little better now. Vaughn is still an old favorite, and the third prompt, which I'm working on now, is about him. Haven't changed a bit, have I?


End file.
